1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer communication systems, and more specifically to a method and system for managing session level services over a complex Internet service application.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Use of publicly available communication systems such as the Internet is currently increasing at a rapid rate. Many companies find it extremely valuable to be able to provide information to customers and other entities over such communication systems. In particular, web pages are made publicly available, and typically accessed by widely available browsers.
Because a large number of people may wish to access a company's information simultaneously, it is becoming more common to provide a bank of web servers that can operate in parallel. Each web server has access to the underlying corporate information as is well known in the art, and each can handle a number of sessions simultaneously.
Each connection between a remote browser and the underlying system can be termed a session. A session is, generally, a series of requests from a browser to a web system that make up an interaction with the characteristics of a conversation. The system retains data as the interaction continues (known as session data) that enables the system to remember what has been done in earlier stages of the interaction. Use of sessions is known to those skilled in the art. The web hosting system, containing several web servers in parallel, maintains information on each of these sessions in order to provide appropriate communications with the remote browser.
An example of a system which uses a bank of web servers in this matter is described in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 6,076,108, issued to Courts et al., and assigned to i2 Technologies, Inc. The method and system set forth in this patent utilizes a global session server (GSS), which maintains information on all of the sessions currently running on the host system. A single session server, or a bank of such session servers, are used to provide session information to each workstation so that a proper response can be made to request by remote browsers.
Some systems have a drawback in that under heavy loads it is difficult to maintain a high level of performance. Also, the system described therein is not as fault tolerant as might be desired.
It would be desirable to provide an improved system and method for providing session services for a bank of web servers that is both very fast, and provides a high level of fault tolerant to insure a high level of system availability.